Recipes   > Ingredient Archive   >  Spinach

• Spinach and Herb Gnocchi
• Wilted Spinach and Mushroom Salad
• Fresh Spinach Soup
• Spinach Soufflé

Forty years ago, spinach was most commonly sold in cans. (No wonder we didn’t like it!) Popularized by the cartoon character Popeye as a muscle-building vegetable, it was something you disliked but were forced to eat, just because it was “good for you.”

Today, we know spinach as a versatile leafy green that’s been cultivated for thousands of years; it features in just about every cuisine on the planet. In the US, it’s the most widely grown green for the table. Baby spinach is a relative newcomer, prized for its convenience and delicate, clean taste. A flat-leaf variety (as opposed to curly or “Savoy” spinach), its leaves are soft and tender, with a very mild flavor. At Earthbound Farm, one of our most popular products is pre-washed baby spinach (see our Spinach page). Baby spinach is perfect for salads and can be added at the last minute to pasta dishes, stirred into soups, or used in any spinach recipe. Because its stems are so tender, there’s no need to remove them. Mature (bunched) spinach generally requires blanching to mellow its strong taste and acidic pungency; in contrast, baby spinach is so mild that its leaves can be added directly to a dish without this extra step.

Baby spinach is available year-round. Look for leaves that are intensely green, dry, and unbruised. If you have more fresh spinach than you can use, steam it until wilted, squeeze out the excess water, and then refrigerate or freeze it for a later use.

One pound of baby spinach looks like a lot, but once cooked, your pound of leaves will reduce to about 1 cup, losing roughly 80 to 90% of its volume. For calculating yields, plan on 1/2 cup cooked spinach per person. Mature bunched spinach, flat leaf or curly, can be substituted for baby spinach but needs to be blanched first for best results.

As it turns out, Popeye was correct in his reverence for the nutritional value of spinach. Raw, it’s an excellent source of vitamin C and beta carotene. It’s also rich in iron, calcium, potassium, and vitamins A and B. So eat your spinach!